The Crisis of Modern Times: Perspectives from The Review of Politics, 1939-1962

6 “The End of Machiavellianism” (1942)

C h a p t e r 6 The End of Machiavellianism Jacques Maritain I My purpose is to consider Machiavellianism.1 Regarding Machiavelli himself, some preliminary observations seem necessary. Innumerable studies, some of them very good, have been dedicated to Machiavelli. Jean Bodin, in the sixteenth century, criticized The Prince in a profound and wise manner. Later on Frederick the Great of Prussia was to write a refutation of Machiavelli in order to exercise his own hypocrisy in a hyper-Machiavellian fashion, and to shelter cynicism in virtue.Duringthenineteenthcentury,theleadersof thebourgeoisie,forinstance theFrenchpoliticalwriterCharlesBenoist,werethoroughly,naïvelyandstupidly fascinated by the clever Florentine. As regards modern scholarship, I should like to note that the best historical commentary on Machiavelli has been written by an American scholar, Professor Allan H. Gilbert.2 As regards more popular presentations , a remarkable edition of the Prince and the Discourses was recently issued by the Modern Library. Max Lerner, in the stimulating, yet somewhat ambiguous Introduction he wrote for this edition of The Prince and The Discourses, rightly observes that Machiavelli was expressing the actual ethos of his time, and that “power politics existed before Machiavelli was ever heard of, it will exist long after his name is only a faint Memory.”3 This is perfectly obvious. But what matters in this connection, is just that Machiavelli lifted into consciousness this ethos of his time and this common practice of the power politicians of all times. Here we are confronted with the fundamental importance, which I have often emphasized, of the phenomenon of “prise de conscience,” and with the risks of perversion which this phenomenon involves. BeforeMachiavelli,princesandconquerorsdidnothesitatetoapplyonmany occasions bad faith, perfidy, falsehood, cruelty, assassination, every kind of crime 98 The End of Machiavellianism 99 of which the flesh and blood man is capable, to the attainment of power and success and to the satisfaction of their greed and ambition. But in so doing they felt guilty, they had a bad conscience—to the extent that they had a conscience. Therefore a specific kind of unconscious and unhappy hypocrisy—that is, the shame of appearing to oneself such as one is—a certain amount of self restraint, and that deep and deeply human uneasiness which we experience in doing what we do not want to do and what is forbidden by a law that we know to be true, prevented the crimes in question from becoming a rule, and provided governed peoples with a limping accommodation between good and evil which, in broad outline, made their oppressed lives, after all, livable. After Machiavelli, not only the princes and conquerors of the cinquecento, but the great leaders and makers of modern states and modern history, in employing injustice for establishing order, and every kind of useful evil for satisfying their willtopower,willhaveaclearconscienceandfeelthattheyaccomplishtheirduty as political heads. Suppose they are not merely skeptical in moral matters, and have some religious and ethical convictions in connection with man’s personal behavior, then they will be obliged, in connection with the field of politics, to put aside these convictions, or to place them in a parenthesis, they will stoically immolate their personal morality on the altar of the political good. What was a simple matter of fact, with all the weaknesses and inconsistencies pertaining, even in the evil, to accidental and contingent things, has become, after Machiavelli , a matter of right, with all the firmness and steadiness proper to necessary things. A plain disregard of good and evil has been considered the rule, not of human morality—Machiavelli never pretended to be a moral philosopher—but of human politics. FornotonlydoweowetoMachiavelliourhavingbecomeawareandconscious of the immorality displayed, in fact, by the mass of political men, but by the same strokehetaughtusthatthisveryimmoralityistheverylawof politics.Hereisthat Machiavellianperversionof politicswhichwaslinked,infact,withtheMachiavellian “prise de conscience” of average political behavior in mankind. The historic responsibility of Machiavelli consists in having accepted, recognized, endorsed as arulethefactof politicalimmorality,andinhavingstatedthatgoodpolitics,politicsconformabletoitstruenatureandtoitsgenuineaims ,isbyessencenon-moral politics. Machiavelli belongs to that series of minds, and some of them much greater than himself, which all through modern times have endeavored to unmask the human being. To have been the first in this lineage is the greatness of the narrow thinker eager to serve the Medici as well as the popular party in Florence, and deceived on both sides. Yet in unmasking the human being he maimed its very flesh, and wounded its eyes. To have thoroughly rejected ethics, metaphysics and theology from the realm...